An intense and disturbing investigative piece published by the Arkansas Times alleges that State Representative Justin Harris, a devout Christian who also owns a religious preschool, gave away two little girls he and his wife had adopted six months before. The little girls were “re-homed” with a former teacher at the preschool, who then sexually abused one of them.
The story, by Arkansas Times reporter Benjamin Hardy, alleges that 38-year-old Eric Cameron Francis was essentially handed his six-year-old victim by Rep. Harris and his wife Marsha. The Harrises have three biological sons, and announced in March of 2013 that they’d adopted two little girls, the six-year-old and her three-year-old sister. But the Times learned that six months after the adoption was finalized, the girls were living with Francis in Bella Vista, about 45 miles away from the Harris home in West Fork. The Francis family also had three other adopted children.
Francis taught at the preschool Harris owns, Growing God’s Kingdom, for about three months before he was apparently fired in January of 2014 for “poor work attendance.” But the girls were left with the Francis family even after Harris fired him. In March of that year, someone placed an anonymous call to the state’s child abuse hotline. The caller, Hardy writes, stated that the Harrises “gave their adoptive children to a family” and “that family in turn gave the children to another family.” The girls were interviewed by the state police. During the interview, the six-year-old disclosed that Francis had sexually abused her.
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